SEQUIM — At about 2:30 p.m. Thursday, Yvonne Sayer returned home and opened her front door to a rising wall of fire.
She stepped back, shocked but unhurt, and dialed 9-1-1, fire officials said.
No people were injured in the blaze, which engulfed Sayer’s home and shut down the 700 block of East Fir Street on Thursday afternoon.
Clallam County Fire District No. 3 received two calls — one from Sayer and one from a passing Clallam Transit driver — at about 2:33 p.m. Thursday, said District 3 Lt. Robert Rhoads.
Engines arrived at the house at 709 E. Fir St. at 2:36 p.m., he said — even after they were initially given an incorrect address on West Fir.
Nobody was home when the fire started, except Sayer’s pet cat and her pet birds, which perished, Rhoads said.
Sayer also has a dog, which is still missing.
Despite the intensity of the blaze, no other structures were threatened, Rhoads added.
Sayer’s brother Wayne Sayer, who arrived at the scene soon after fire crews did, said she has two children who, when the fire was discovered, were in school at Helen Haller Elementary about 11 blocks away.
Instead of coming home, they were sent to stay with an aunt, he said.
His sister was renting the 1,300-square-foot house, he said.
The house, whose white front is now blackened, is “a total loss,” Rhoads said as crews began mopping up.
‘Potentially deadly’
“It was a potentially deadly situation,” at the moment Yvonne Sayer opened her front door, he added.
The fire had been contained inside the house before the unsuspecting Sayer arrived.
When oxygen was let in, it fed the flames and created a backdraft, an explosive surge caused by the sudden mixing of air with the other combustible gases inside the house.
District 3 Chief and Fire Marshal Roger Moeder is conducting the investigation of the fire’s cause, Rhoads said Thursday evening.
The culprit “could have been anything,” he said, such as a coffee maker left on or a Christmas tree light bulb.
No cause had been determined Thursday.
Eighteen firefighters, three` engines and two medical aid cars had rushed to the scene, finding a rapidly escalating blaze.
Flames were spreading through the rooms; crews attacked with water hoses, then entered the smoldering building.
The crew also used a chainsaw to cut a hole in the roof to vent the billowing smoke, Rhoads said.
As neighbors came out to watch, Sequim Police officers barricaded the neighborhood street.
Volunteers with the Olympic Peninsula Chapter of the American Red Cross and Clallam County Fire District No. 3 chaplain Hans Bailey sought to comfort Sayer as she stood beside the fire engines, weeping.
Firefighters had the blaze extinguished about an hour after arrival, Rhoads said.
________
Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
